


A Kinder Hubris

by LizzieAddamsTookAnAxe



Category: Lust From Beyond (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe- Good lauv'abrarc, Emotional Roller Coaster, F/F, F/M, Feel-good, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jettisoning Lovecraftian nihilism for, Lovecraftian, Lovecraftian Romance, M/M, No crack, Original Character(s), Other, References to Lovecraft, Therapy, Trans Female Character, Transhumanism, post-Lovecraftian humanism, post-lovecraftian themes, transhumanist themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 19:35:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30043677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizzieAddamsTookAnAxe/pseuds/LizzieAddamsTookAnAxe
Summary: According the Chaos Theory, even the slightest change can cause a cascading spiral of events with consequences far beyond their origin.A butterfly's wings. A coin toss. A single bullet.With one single life spared, things... things get better.Lusst'ghaa beckons, and those who rise to answer it's call have a few things to say back to it.
Relationships: Amanda Moon/Jonathan Moon, Victor Holloway/Lily
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	A Kinder Hubris

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews and comments welcome!

_ "That is not dead which can eternal lie, _

_ and with strange aeons even death may die." _

-Abd al Hazrad, Kitab al Azif

_ "Therapy only works when we have a genuine desire to know ourselves as we are. Not as we would like to be." _

-Hannibal (2013)

“ _ Lost, terrified, confused. _

_ Come and stand on our doorstep. _

_ We reclaim ourselves by touching the Gates of Fulfilment.” _

_ - _ the Book of Lasih

~o0o~

_______________________

Xu'thrar

The Chamber of Change

???

_______________________

_ In endless untime beyond human counting or comprehension, the Lustful God lauv'abrarc lies dead and dreaming in Xu'thrar, the City Between Spaces, the mighty citadel of the Omniscient. He is bound with ropes of living sinew and tendon the width of the mighty Amazon river, twined all about with pulsating blood vessels the thickness of superhighways that carry his unnatural vital fluids off to some unknown mechanism for purification and back into his veins again. _

_ In his deathly slumber the Lustful God sings, his mighty thoughtvoice resonating through the timeless spaces without end or beginning, a keening wail of... bliss? Pain? Sorrow? Nothing mankind can comprehend, perhaps. The songs of such an alien intellect are poorly suited to mortal comprehension. _

-pleasure / bliss / ecstasy / not-enough / never-enough / why-never-enough-

_ His monumental bulk thrashes back and forth in what is recognizable even in the extremity of his inhumanity as a nightmare. In his deathly slumber, the Lustful God shall dream until the stars come right again, and the Essence streams converge upon mighty Xu'thrar and the Chamber of Change, and he can live once more. Then he will break free of the chrysalis in which he slumbers, and the world will tremble, the mighty will cower and beg for pardon, and all mortals from the lowliest to the mightiest will be Changed. _

-Urgo'ecna-

-Ac'mlele-

_ What could such a mighty being dream of, as he slumbers away the aeons uncountable? Does he dream of the slow drift of continental plates as they shift and warp, as mountains rise and fall, as the face of the world changes? Does he dream of the mathematics of the spheres, of their gravity fields and electromagnetic coronae dancing and glittering like radiant haloes in the endless black emptiness of space? Does he dream of things yet stranger, of Essence streams and the arcane sciences of Transformation and the mysteries of the Absolute? _

-my- counselors/advisors/companions/ **friends-**

-where-are-you-

_ The worlds of Lusst’ghaa and Earth are both sick. A cancer rots Lusst’ghaa, draining the very Essence that gives it life, leaving the Changed reduced to a paltry few scavengers hiding amongst the frained husks of their kin, devouring the landscape and vampirizing the Land of eternal Ecstasy. Earth is afflicted by no such force, but it labors under the burdens of war, of poverty, of oppression, of hatred and bigotry, of ignorance and aggressive consumption. The twin worlds cry out for the stern hand of a wise and compassionate leader on their rudder, one dedicated to leading them to true bliss and endless fulfillment. The worlds cry out for lauv’abrarc’s unyielding strength and vision. _

-why-did-you- rebel/ **betray** /disappoint/ **abandon-me?**

-will-you- return/cycle/ **come-back?**

-please-

_ Soon comes the Day of Awakening, as was foreseen in the  _ Kitab al Azif,  _ the ‘Book of the Night Insects,’ penned by the mad Yemeni poet and occultist Abd al Hazrad, whose name meant Servant of the Prohibited. Guided by snippets of his work translated by the prophets Doreen Austerlitz and Enlightened Lasih, the Cult of Ecstasy awaits lauv’abrarc’s awakening, when he shall set the twin worlds right. The world shall flame bright in an joyous orgy of flesh on flesh in flesh melding  _ into _ flesh until all sorrows have dissolved in the sea of heaving bodies and spurting fluids, and all thoughts are drowned beneath the shadow of the Infinite. _

\- my-kingdom-is- glorious/ **cancerous** /eternal/ **dying-**

-i-am unconquerable/ **imprisoned** /pinnacle/ **alone-**

**-aid/assist/help** me-

_ Until then, wrapped in sinew and vein, suspended in the heart of the Chamber of Change, the Lustful God slumbers.  _

-let-there-be-an-ending-

_ And dreams.  _

**-end-** me- 

_ And hopes. _

-please-

~o0o~

_______________________

Bleakmoor, Massachusetts

11:35 PM

2020 AD  
______________________

"Jonathan, put the gun down."

Victor wished his voice had come out as firmly as he had intended, but instead it was shaking in fear, almost childishly high-pitched and quavering. Oh God, no. Not Lily, not after so much had happened, after he'd gone through so much. He couldn't lose her, not now, not like this, so senselessly, so stupidly. He had not come all this way, done all this, stained his hands with blood and become a goddamn  _ murderer _ , just to lose her at the end.

"Jonathan, please. What are you even doing? She's the whole reason I came here, remember? I came to rescue Lily; you said you'd help me, not shoot her! Please, for God's sake, put the gun down."

"N-n-no!" Johnathan snapped. The gun in his hand wavered back and forth as his body shook with unrepressed... fear? Rage? "Y-you don't know what hap-hapens when... you can't trust her! Sh-she can't be trusted! I t-trusted Amanda, and l-look where it got me! I-i-insane, broken. J-just a h-husk." 

Lily just sat there on the stained mattress, cradling the guitar he had given her for her birthday, what, a week ago? Two? God, everything was blurring together into one messed-up nightmare. Victor remembered that day so clearly- the smell of the rose petals he'd scattered along the floor, the way the lights had played on her hair, the golden sounds sounds of the guitar beneath her supple fingers- but the time between then and now? It was a bleak, miserable haze of blood and sex and pain. Had the Lodge hurt her like they'd hurt him? Was that why she was just sitting there silently, occasionally plucking a string but otherwise unmoving? Was she just going to sit there and die quietly? Well,  _ fuck _ that.

"Jonathan, listen to me. Listen to me, man!" Victor breathed deeply, centering himself with a breathing exercise he'd looked up on the internet when he had first started having the nightmares, his hands clenched into fists at his side. He weighed the odds of success if he went for Jonathan’s gun, and didn’t like where the conclusions took him. No, he wasn’t quick enough for it to be a sure thing- this was going to have to be solved with words, not violence. “What do you even mean, ‘my Amanda’? What did she even  _ do _ to you?”

"Y-you saw what Amanda did to me," Jonathan whispered brokenly. "T-the masks. They- they make you  _ crazy.  _ I-I broke m-m-my brain for her. I k-k-kept putting on those m-masks, even as they  _ t-tore _ at my  _ brains _ ! And sh-she just… she could have left... you can't trust her. She's your Amanda. You'll b-be like me. I-it's her fault the Lodge caught you, r-r-raped you. They r-raped you because of h-her, because she betrayed you!" The gun muzzle lowered slightly as Jonathan's shoulders slumped. "Just like A-amanda betrayed me. She's your Amanda, V-victor."

"No," Victor said quietly. "She's not my Amanda. I... I was hers." The words seemed to hang in the air between them with an almost physical weight.

"What? What the h-hell are you- what? No, you’re not! N-no. She's with the Lodge, sh-she betrayed you! Y-you know that!" The gun snapped up again, barrel directed right between Lily's eyes. "You came here to rescue her, d-damnit! And she led you into this trap! How the f-fuck are you  _ her  _ Amanda? This whole thing is her fault!"

"No," Victor said firmly. "Jonathan, I hurt her, do you understand me? With the dreams, the visions, I... I hurt her sexually. I hit her, I hit my fiancée, I- I was so rough with her in bed it was practically rape. No, it was rape. I didn't mean to hurt her, I didn't want to hurt her, but I did. Again and again, I hurt her." He sighed. "Yes, Lily betrayed me. Yes she manipulated us, tricked us, led us into a trap. I know all that. But, listen to me. The Lodge forced her; it threatened her, brainwashed her, kidnapped her. She  _ is _ like Amanda- she was trapped by psychopaths, with no decent way out, doing what she had to in order to  _ survive.” _

He sighed. “And, look. My hands aren’t clean. I've done things to her that no man should do, things most women would never forgive, that no woman  _ should _ forgive. As much as she's hurt me, I've hurt her worse. And she still fell in love with me; even with the Lodge, even with what I did, she still loved me. It all started out a lie; it didn't end as one."

"S-so, what?" Jonathan snapped bitterly. "S-so, it's ok, then? R-retroactively ok? We just walk out of here holding hands, s-singing a song? It's all a f-f-fucking fairy tale and you're P-prince Charming now? True love conquers all?"

"No," Victor agreed sadly. "This isn't a fairy tale. We're all murderers here, remember? Look at me; look! My hands are covered in their blood, in Austerlitz's blood. I blew his fucking brains out with my gun, that's not fairy tale materiel. But we're all still alive, and he's dead, and it's over if we let it be. We walk out of here, you and me and my fiancee, alive and well, with Austerlitz dead and the book Amanda sent you to steal safe in that satchel you're wearing." Jonathan started, the gun waving back and forth as he steadied himself. His eyes went back and forth shiftily, and he tried to protest. "Oh, yeah," Victor said over his attempts to interrupt, "I noticed the bag, and I noticed you take the book when we first got here. I was desperate, mad as hell, and maybe a little crazy, but I wasn't stupid. Still not. And my eyes work just fine."

"I-" Jonathan clutched at the leather satchel nervously with his off hand, cradling it to him like a newborn. "A-a-amanda would only let me h-help you if I s-stole the book; sh-sh-she said we needed it- can’t reach the Ch-chamber of Change without itw. I w-wanted to come anyway, b-believe me! For y-your sake. Because I'd b-been in your shoes. Rescuing the woman you l-love, only to- to be used, and thrown away."

Victor shook his head again. "Don't you see? We've all been using each other, hurting each other, betraying each other! Are we gonna be killing each other next, turning on each other like rabid fucking animals? Like the Lodge did? They're all dead, Jonathan! The Lodge is dead, Austerlitz is dead! We killed them all, it's over, and if we start killing each other next then Austerlitz was right- we're no goddamn different than those savages. Just killing each other because we're too- too damn  _ broken _ inside to move on and heal. Is that what you want, Jonathan? You want to  _ actually _ be a Scarlet? You want to  _ earn _ that costume you're wearing?"

There was a quiet rap on the door. All three froze, Victor and Jonathan snapping to aggressive attention, united again in the face of this new threat. Victor put his index finger to his lips, miming 'shhhhh,' then made a finger gun and mimed pointing at the door. 'Cover me,' he mouthed slowly at Jonathan, who gave a brisk nod and pointed his gun at the door. As Victor drew his revolver from it's holster, Lily drew back, hiding behind Jonathan, apparently finding him less frightening than the unknown assailant outside the door. In the back corner of his mind, Victor hoped like hell that the threat of whatever the hell was out there helped them all overcome their differences, or at least persuaded Jonathan to shoot someone Victor wasn't engaged to.

Victor considered his next move. Go out guns blazing? Open the door carefully and ambush them as they stepped in? Knock back?

Instead, he simply said, “Yeah? Who is it?”

Jonathan shot him a bewildered look, to which he just shrugged and mouthed, ‘What the fuck else was I supposed to say?’ The man shrugged slightly, his head angling to one side in a ‘yeah, ok, you got me there’ gesture. His gun stayed pointed at the door, not wavering for a moment.

“Victor?” a familiar voice replied, muffled by the heavy steel door. Victor heard a sharp intake of breath behind him, and a whispered, “Is that who-” before Jonathan murmured, “Careful. It c-could be a trap. They could have a gun on him, or they c-could have t-turned him.”

Victor nodded, and waved him back. Carefully, Victor opened the door and then backed up sharply, dropping into a rough approximation of the shooter’s stance the cops on his mother’s favorite police dramas used, pistol aimed, finger hovering just above the trigger. He thumbed the revolver’s hammer back with his thumb, and the loud click echoed through the room.

There, silhouetted in the ever-present bloody glow of the red light bulbs, was Sabinian, looking somewhat worse for wear. His shirtsleeves were splattered with blood, as were the jagged knives he held, his natty waistcoat was nowhere to be seen and his right leg had a nasty-looking red stain spreading from a slash in the trouser fabric, he had a split lip and the mother of all black eyes forming- but he was very much alive and seemingly not severely injured.

Sabinian took a step backwards and held up his hands defensively, flipping the blades so that they pointed back behind him unthreateningly, and said "Hello, Seeing One. Hello, Jonathan. Hello, miss. There's no need for gunplay. I am, as always, on your side." He sheathed the blades in twin scabbards hanging from a spiked leather belt that was presumably looted from a dead Scarlet. "I would appreciate not being shot, if it's all the same to you."

"Holy shit, Sabinian. I thought I'd gotten you killed." A weight seemed to lift off Victor's shoulders. He pointed the gun to the ceiling, thumbed the hammer down, and stuffed it back into the waistband of his pants. So many dead, but so far only the right ones. Maybe the Lustful God really was with him. He could only hope that this run of good luck held out. Actually, given the sheer amount of shit they'd all been through, Victor figured they were all owed an improvement, actually.

"Hmph," Sabinian snorted, that understated sign of amusement more emotion than Victor had seen out of him in their brief acquaintance. "I am, thank lauv'abrarc, harder to kill than most; and the Scarlet Lodge make for poor jailers." He paused, and added mildly, “Perhaps you might consider  _ not _ putting your pistol in your trousers, Seeing? It would be unfortunate if you were to accidentally shoot yourself after all the trouble I’ve gone to to keep you alive.”

“Ah,” Victor muttered. “Yeah, uh… I don’t exactly have a holster for this thing.”

“Mmmm. I’m sure we can scrounge something up back in the mansion. If I’d known you were storing your pistol with the barrel pointed directly at your vulnerable parts, I’d have done so already. We have a small armory, you know. My family have been members of the local gun club since its founding in, oh… 1879? There’s likely to be quite a few holsters stored somewhere, probably in an old wine crate buried beneath a stack of vintage French erotica, knowing the state of our organizational skills at the moment.”

His gaze seemed to take in Lily in the corner, her guitar hanging limply from her hand and her eyes blank. "I presume that this is Lily, then? I'm glad to see you found her safe and sound, Seeing One."

"Yes. Yes," Jonathan said, holstering his gun and walking over to stand by Lily's side, "this is Lily. My fiancée. It turns out she was a member of the Lodge, but… it’s a long story, Sabinian, but she’s with us now. I know you’re, uh, not likely to want to have a forme Lodge cultist join us, but please understand, I… I…”

Sabinian pursed his lips, cool eyes flicking back and forth between the three of them, seeming to weigh the pros and cons of the situation, before nodding slowly. “No, Seeing, I understand. If you’re willing to vouch for her, I’m sure Amanda would be willing to accept her into our ranks. lauv’abrarc is a merciful god, after all, and we would be foolish to turn away defectors. I’m sure she will be a valuable asset in the days to come.”

Victor put an arm around her shoulder, and she huddled close and said quietly, "Thank you, Sabinian. I… I promise you won’t regret this.You or Victor." He let out a quiet sigh of relief at that. She'd been so... broken, before, and silent- like she just wanted to die. But now she seemed... not better, of course not better, not yet; but at least alive inside. She was speaking, at least, which was something. Maybe... Victor was almost too afraid for hope at this point, but... but. What else did he have, but hope? 

"Hehe, y-yeah, so, isn't it g-great?" Jonathan asked nervously. "The kn-kn-knight in shining armor here sure did manage the whole action hero deal. And I thought it was m-my speciality, the saving-the-damsel in distress th-thing! Funny sort of d-damsel, and funny sort of rescue, b-but I guess it' a funny sort of d-day, huh?" He holstered his gun as well, and gave Victor an encouraging pat on the shoulder, and Victor thought he would weep in relief.

"Y-you look like I feel, Sabinian," he added, to everyone's bitter amusement. "Th-think you need a w-whiskey and a shower." He lifted an arm and gave an exaggerated sniff. "Whoo! Know I do! An hour-long one.” A shy smile followed this awkward jest.

He was rewarded with a thin smile from Sabinian, a snort from Victor, and even a slight giggle from Lily. "Yes," Sabinian drawled. "Quite. I could do with a bath and a change of clothes myself.” He turned to Victor, his expression returning to it’s customary dourness, and said, “You're becoming quite the hero, Seeing One. Let's hope your luck holds. We could all do with a bit more luck, I'd say."

Sabinian stepped forward, and peered at Lily. "Wait just a moment... I know you, don't I?"

She hung her head, and responded."At- at the manor," she replied, the words coming out in a rush like a lanced wound, life seeming to return to her features. "I was there two years ago, during the ritual. Most of us- most of the Lodge- were. Charles picked some of the others up later, of course, street bums for muscle, but the core were all ex-Cult. I was an initiate then, just joined. You spoke with us, told us to leave, me and Mabel, and we did. You saved our lives, but it was too late for me, I'd already seen... him. What Lusst'ghaa had done to him. When Charles found me afterwards... he... I should never have listened to him." Victor rubbed her back soothingly in small circles, and she huddled gratefully in the protective circle of arms. "I saw Willard, I saw what he had become. He'd always been a monster, but... I was so scared. When the ritual went wrong, Charles was the only one who seemed to make any sense. And then he... he turned out as bad as Willard."

"Mabel was your friend, if I remember correctly," Sabinian asked. "She is still with us, you know, at our mansion. If the Seeing One and Jonathan both vouch for you, I see no reason why she should not join us there. Mabel will be thrilled to see you again." He gave her a slight, encouraging smile, before turning serious again. "Look, we really have no more time for reminiscences and apologies; the Lodge has been badly wounded, possibly crippled with the death of Austerlitz, Rhea, and their other strongest members, but there are still many Lodge cultists left. Not here in the theater, perhaps, but there are no doubt others scattered throughout Bleakmoor and they  _ will _ come. We should move quickly, before they arrive."

Victor glanced at Jonathan, somehow managing to encode "Do you trust me?" and "Can I trust you?" and "Can we both trust Sabinian?" into one look. He received a firm nod in return, and said, "You're right. Jonathan's car is parked back by the pay phone; if we stay low and quiet we should be able to reach it and get back to the manor, no problem." He rolled his eyes heavenward, and added, "Knock on wood."

~o0o~

The night outside was a warm summer’s night, muggy and stil. The town was lit brightly enough to see by the shine of the neon signs glowing from the storefronts and reflecting off of the deep puddles of water that covered the rain-drenched streets. It was quiet save for the dim susurrus of crickets and the hum of the neon signs, but that didn't mean anything, did it? It had been quiet when Victor had first arrived, too. The streets were as empty as they were before, too, no Scarlets screaming and waving clubs and knives from the rooftops, no armed women on stilts towering above them, no crazed cultists on loudspeakers. It was almost eerie after everything that occured that night.

"Car's this way," Victor said as the doors of the theater closed behind them for what was hopefully the last time. 

"I c-can't help but f-feel we should have torched place behind us," Jonathan muttered as they turned down a back alley that opened up into a broad downtown street. "We got good at t-torching the place behind us, me and Amanda. It w-works wonders, honestly. Just chuck a l-lamp at something flammable, and boom! P-problem solved." He pointed down the road. "C-car's just down there, maybe two hundred feet, stashed in another alley out of s-sight. Seriously, guys, we c-can just g-get some gas cans, Victor has some m-matches; we just de-decapitated the s-snake, we can b-burn it's nest, right?" He glanced nervously around, scanning the rooftops for Scarlets.

"I'd rather not send up signal flares," Sabinian replied, shaking his head, "particularly given that our mansion is not that far out of Bleakmoor, as the crow flies. Arson would garner unwanted police attention, and my connections with the Yelvertons and my presence at the manor two years ago are both quite easy for the authorities to discover- the fire is on-record as an accident, but even the dullest policeman would grow suspicious if I was involved with two such 'accidents,' and we would hardly benefit from an in-depth police investigation of either affair." 

“Ah,” Jonathan agreed, “Yeah, let’s not bring the cops down on our h-h-heads. I doubt Amanda wants them trampling th-through the manor. You can’t, I d-don’t know, get Ephraim to pull some strings? He was a cop once, right?” 

Sabinian snorted. “Ephraim having been a police officer allows us some access to off-limits police records; it hardly allows us to silence investigations into blatant arson. We’re a society with several rich and well-connected members, not the Deep State or the Bavarian Illuminati. We don’t have brainwashed governors or presidents on our payr- ah, there it is.”

The car was stashed right next to Victor’s old Toyota, and he sadly bid it a mental farewell as they climbed into Jonathan’s station wagon. ‘Farewell, old friend,’ he thought, ‘vetran of a thousand back-alley auctions and rural yard sale artifact hunts! I’ll miss you!” He wasn’t, he thought, just bidding goodbye to an old car- in a very real way, he was bidding farewell to his old, quiet life as a dusty antiquarian.

He got in the station wagon. He closed the door behind him, and as they drove into the dark summer night he did not look back again.

**Author's Note:**

> Although the title may suggest otherwise, the point of divergence is far earlier than Jonathan refusing to shoot Lily, and other changes to the timeline, most for the better, will become apparent as the story extends. Some hints can even be found in some of Jonathan's dialogue.


End file.
